Helping Adult Children: Liquidate The Bank Of Mom & Dad

This article presents the evidence against helping your adult children too much. It points out that helping adult children financial is a major reason more people aren’t financially prepared for retirement. It’s okay to help your children. But realize there are limits, and make sure they know that. Otherwise, in a few years you might run out of money and have to ask them for help.

Four out of five parents provide some type of financial support for their adult offspring, and they spend twice as much on them as they do saving for retirement.

Even more disturbing, half of parents are willing to draw down savings, and a quarter would go into debt or pull from retirement savings to support kids who’ve left the nest, according to a new survey from Merrill Lynch and Age Wave, a research firm, which provided the results to USA TODAY exclusively.